Happy October!!
This is the month of Halloween and spooky stories!
I’ve been doing a lot of research on Black authors in the Horror genre and I was pleasantly surprised to find that there are way more out there than I thought there were.
For the month of October, I am featuring Black authors in the horror genre and calling it Blacktober.
Some Black people look at me sideways when I talk about reading horror as if my soul is destined for some special place in hell, or I’m demon-possessed.
But let’s think about it for a moment. Black people live in a proverbial horror novel every single day. We are being targeted daily and go through each day fully understanding that at any moment we can be thrown into a potentially deadly encounter with a police officer or a white supremacist.
So, why read horror?
Because it is cathartic.
Black horror authors write from a space where they control the narrative and the outcome. In a world that is exhausting to live in, where we mourn the murder of Black men and women at the hands of police over and over with no justice to speak of, writing a horror novel is a cathartic release.
Although a lot of people are jumping on the Black Horror bandwagon since Jordan Peele came on the scene with his movie, Get Out, Black horror writers were out there way before that.
And with my Blacktober Reads campaign, I am highlighting Black independently published and traditionally published authors who have some pretty amazing and creepy books.
So, if you want a good story to read, check out my podcast Instagram page here. You will find seven books so far, and I will be posting a different author every day all the way through the end of the month.
You can also listen to the first interview for Blacktober here. I will be interviewing four more guests throughout the month as well. So be sure to subscribe to Between the Reads wherever you get your podcasts! We are on most of the podcast platforms, including Amazon’s new streaming service, Amazon Music.
I hope you’ll join me this month by supporting these Black authors and picking up a book or two.
Until next time…
Happy Halloween!
